> Right now the self driving tech doesn't do anything to communicate with the driver besides just a general warning.
I think this probably fails to understand how quickly it's making decisions, how quickly the situation could change, or how it could even judge it's own confidence. It could quite confidently drive you into a river; it's not likely to do that unless it's pretty sure it's a road.
As self-driving technology gets better, the robot is going to be much better and the failure situations much more rare.
> I just don't get this mindset. There are different levels of "paying attention" that require different levels of mental energy.
If one doesn't have to provide direction or speed, there is literally nothing to keep a human attentive enough to make a difference. You expect someone to passively look at a green/red/yellow indicator for hours at a time while not otherwise engaged with driving? And then when that indicator turns red you expect them to immediately be able to make a useful judgement? I think humans are more than likely to make that situation worse!
> The discussion also isn't made with nearly any other driver assist technology. No one suggests that automatic transmissions or cruise control are worthless because the driver still has to pay attention.
There is a huge difference. If you have cruise control or automatic transmission, the vehicle still doesn't go where it's supposed to without you paying attention. The driver still has to pay attention because they have to pay attention or they don't anywhere. With self driving cars, the driver is now a passenger and doesn't have to pay attention for the vehicle to work.
I haven't seen any evidence of a self driving car accident in which the car had no potential to warn the driver. All the examples I have seen are when a car misidentifies on object in its path as a non-threat. The problem is that breaking and/or swerving are very drastic actions. There is therefore a deservedly high barrier before a system is willing to take those actions. At the worst you could have two systems running in parallel and one is tuned to be much more aggressive in making those decisions and that information is communicated to the driver.
No self driving car that doesn't have at least level 4 autonomy allows the driver to not pay attention like you are suggesting. The benefit of a cooperative tech is that it takes mental load off the driver. Like I said previously, there are different levels of mental energy that a person can spend on a task. It isn't like the choices are either 100% or 0% of your attention.
I think this probably fails to understand how quickly it's making decisions, how quickly the situation could change, or how it could even judge it's own confidence. It could quite confidently drive you into a river; it's not likely to do that unless it's pretty sure it's a road.
As self-driving technology gets better, the robot is going to be much better and the failure situations much more rare.
> I just don't get this mindset. There are different levels of "paying attention" that require different levels of mental energy.
If one doesn't have to provide direction or speed, there is literally nothing to keep a human attentive enough to make a difference. You expect someone to passively look at a green/red/yellow indicator for hours at a time while not otherwise engaged with driving? And then when that indicator turns red you expect them to immediately be able to make a useful judgement? I think humans are more than likely to make that situation worse!
> The discussion also isn't made with nearly any other driver assist technology. No one suggests that automatic transmissions or cruise control are worthless because the driver still has to pay attention.
There is a huge difference. If you have cruise control or automatic transmission, the vehicle still doesn't go where it's supposed to without you paying attention. The driver still has to pay attention because they have to pay attention or they don't anywhere. With self driving cars, the driver is now a passenger and doesn't have to pay attention for the vehicle to work.